Many school districts were closed today due to a late winter blizzard blanketing Wisconsin.
According to Tim Halbach with the National Weather Service's Milwaukee office, the state hasn’t seen a storm like this — with such high winds — in 15 years.
"The Groundhog’s Day blizzard back in 2011, which ironically was the day my daughter was born," Halbach says. "It’s pretty rare to get everything to come together to get a weather system like this."
This time around, wind gusts reached up to 60 miles per hour.
"We’ll have other winter storms that might be in the 20-30 mph range and still be impactful, but to get all the elements to come together, once every 10-15 years we get something like this," Halbach says.
He says he’s getting reports that southeast Wisconsin has gotten anywhere from three to nine inches of snow. He and his team are still nailing down those numbers.
"Because one spot you might have snow drift that’s like two feet high and then it’s bare ground in other spots," Halbach says. "So this is really one of the trickiest types of snows to try to measure."
He says the storm is being driven by a strong area of low pressure.
"It’s typically just a very strong low pressure system that we start seeing these strong winds and if it’s deepening and getting stronger, we see these high winds and high snowfall amounts."
Halbach says least one all-time record has been broken in the state. Wausau is reporting 30 inches of snow. Its previous record was 20 inches.
Here in the Milwaukee area, Halbach anticipates lifting the blizzard warning by the end of today, but he cautions anyone who’s driving: "Roads will still be rough because it’s still going to be windy — so any travel tonight is still going to be a little bit rough," he says.
Milwaukee’s Department of Public Works says crews are working around the clock to clear streets.
